President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Republican senators, global investors, voters and even Elon Musk that he won’t bury the federal government in debt with his multitrillion-dollar tax-break package.
Financial markets have remained skeptical, as the deficit continues to grow despite Trump’s promises to curb spending.
Here's the latest:
Trump implores New Jersey voters to back governor candidate Jack Ciattarelli in primary
The president announced his endorsement for Ciattarelli last month but held a telephone rally for the candidate Monday ahead of the start early in-person voting on Tuesday. The phone call lasted about 10 minutes, with the president saying that voters will decide whether the state remains a “high tax, high crime sanctuary state.”
“New Jersey is ready to pop out of that blue horror show and really get in there and vote for somebody that’s going to make things happen,” the president said.
Ciattarelli said his first executive order if elected would be ending any sanctuary policies for immigrants in the country illegally. Currently, the state attorney general has directed local law enforcement not to assist federal agents in civil immigration matters.
Ciattarelli is running against former radio talk host Bill Spadea, state Sen. Jon Bramnick, former Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mario Kranjac and a southern New Jersey contractor named Justin Barbera.
Trump and Senate budget hawks talk privately over increasing cuts in GOP tax bill
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, said he’d spoken with Trump recently about the bill after his promise that at least four senators were willing to hold the bill unless steeper cuts to the deficit were made.
“My main sticking point is the debt ceiling. If they strip the debt ceiling off, there’s a lot of things I would vote for,” said Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Paul said that he told Trump this would be the first time in recent history that Republicans would “own” the debt ceiling if an increase of the nation’s debt limit was included in the GOP’s sweeping tax and spending package.
“My target for the next fiscal year (is) $6.5 trillion,” said Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. Senators, Scott said, must “go line by line through the budget” to achieve “pre-pandemic levels of spending.” Scott added that he’d recently conveyed this to Trump.
Harvard lawyers ask judge to rule whether health research grants were lawfully ended
Attorneys representing the Ivy League institution filed a motion for summary judgement in its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Massachusetts U.S. District Court on Monday, asserting that the Trump administration’s freeze of billions of dollars in grants “flagrantly violates the First Amendment multiple times over.”
“The Government’s across-the-board freeze and terminations are unreasonable and unreasoned,” the motion filed by Harvard reads, going on to say that the Trump administration asserts antisemitism concerns “as the basis for its actions but fails to explain how the termination of funding for research to treat cancer, support veterans, and improve national security addresses antisemitism.”
Harvard attorneys said the institution has been at the forefront of health research for 400 years.
“All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard was clear: Allow the Government to micromanage your viewpoints and your academic institution or jeopardize your ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions,” attorneys wrote.
GOP senators are waiting on Trump before launching Russian sanctions package
Sen. Markwayne Mullin says Congress is ready to slap sanctions on Russia to push an end to the Ukraine war — as soon as Trump says so.
“We are prepared to move forward as soon as they feel like it’s the timing’s right,” the Oklahoma Republican said.
He said, “We don’t want to get in front of the White House. We want to work with them.”
Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has been overseas working to build momentum for the sanctions on Putin’s regime. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said earlier that the White House is still working toward a deal to end the war.
Trump is talking to GOP senators about Medicaid cuts and taxes in the big bill
GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri says Trump told him in a call he “wants to make sure” the Senate doesn’t cut Medicaid benefits.
The Missouri Republican has been working to strip steep health care cuts in the House bill, beyond work requirements for some aid recipients.
Hawley said Trump told him the senators could instead raise revenue by closing the so-called carried interest tax loophole used by wealthy filers.
DeChambeau golfs on the White House lawn
U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau was getting in some golf practice on a famous green Monday at the South Lawn of the White House, according to a video posted by a White House aide.
DeChambeau, who golfed on Sunday with President Donald Trump at his club in Virginia, returned to the White House with the president Sunday and appeared to stick around Monday, when he used the putting green on the South Lawn.
The putting green was first installed in 1954 during President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration. It was removed in 1971, later restored in a different location by former President George H.W. Bush and moved to its current spot under President Bill Clinton.
White House makes public Trump’s new official picture
His stare is intent. His coiffure has been swept to his right side. The lighting is dramatic with a mix of shadows that depart from the brighter photographs of his predecessors. An American flag pin gleams in his lapel.
On the Monday social media post announcing the portrait, the White House used a flame emoji to describe the picture. The posting on X featured a video of a suited man hanging the framed picture on the wall to the soundtrack of an Austin Powers-like jazz riff as people walked by, giving the picture a look of stillness and permanence.
Trump meets Senate GOP leader at White House
Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune met at the White House at a critical moment Monday as senators returned to begin negotiations over the president’s big tax breaks and spending cuts package.
Thune said that GOP senators are “on track” to have the package approved by their July 4 deadline.
But Thune also acknowledged the long road ahead as senators grind through private talks over changes to put its own stamp on the House-passed bill.
More white South Africans arrive in the US under new refugee program
Nine people, including families, arrived late last week, said Jaco Kleynhans, head of international liaison at the Solidarity Movement, a group representing members of South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority. An initial group of 59 white South Africans arrived in Virginia on last month.
The program announced in February fast-tracks the resettlement of white South Africans after the Trump administration indefinitely suspended other refugee programs.
The administration said it is offering refugee status to white South Africans it alleges are being persecuted by their Black-led government and are victims of racially motivated violence. The South African government has denied the allegations and said they are a mischaracterization of the country.
▶ Read more about the South African refugee program
RFK Jr. says autism ‘destroys’ families. Here’s what those families want you to know
Emery Eversoll and her mother shared a good laugh when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that some autistic children will never write poems. The 16-year-old’s bedroom is full of notebooks featuring her verses. Sometimes, she quietly recites poetry to get through an outburst of anger.
Still, this Kansas family is optimistic about Kennedy’s plans to launch a broad-based study of what causes autism.
Kennedy has said the developmental disorder ”destroys families.” He said children with autism “will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”
For some people with autism, his comments were an overdue recognition of the day-to-day difficulties for families with autistic loved ones. To others, Kennedy deeply misrepresented the realities of their disability.
▶ Read more about Kennedy’s plan and the reactions to it
Another federal judge freezes Trump's push for wartime deportations
U.S. District Judge John Holcomb, who was appointed in 2019 by Trump, ruled that the administration is not providing due process rights to people it accuses of belonging to a Venezuelan gang against which Trump invoked an 18th century wartime law.
Holcomb temporarily halted removals of people in central California targeted under Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. He joins judges in New York, Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania in temporarily freezing deportations under the act.
Holcomb did find that Trump’s invocation of the act was proper. That’s in contrast to some other judges who ruled it cannot be used against a gang.
Trump says ‘horrific’ Colorado attack ‘WILL NOT BE TOLERATED’ in US
Trump says the “horrific” attack in Boulder, Colorado, “WILL NOT BE TOLERATED in the United States of America” and suggested it was the fault of his predecessor’s immigration policies.
In a post on his social media site, Trump wrote, that the suspect in the attack, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, “came in through Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy” – even though the details surrounding Soliman aren’t entirely clear.
Soliman was living in the U.S. illegally after having entered the country in August 2022 on a B2 visa that expired in February 2023, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a post on X. B2 is generally a non-immigrant, temporary tourist visa.
McLaughlin said Soliman filed for asylum in September 2022 and was granted a work authorization in March 2023 that had expired.
Trump and Xi set to talk this week about trade challenges
Trump is “likely” to talk this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says.
The two leaders are slated to talk as trade tensions have intensified after both nations agreed in May to reduce tariffs for a 90-day negotiation period. But the U.S. is displeased with problems over China exporting critical minerals, while China is frustrated by U.S. efforts to limit their access to advanced computer chips.
Leavitt told reporters that the White House would provide a readout of the call between Trump and Xi.
Pennsylvania senators mostly agree during forum on bipartisanship, and politely disagree
Pennsylvania’s two U.S. senators, Democrat John Fetterman and Republican David McCormick sat on Monday for 30 minutes to take questions from Shannon Bream, anchor of Fox News Sunday, at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston as part of an effort to promote bipartisanship.
They found it easy to agree on certain questions, such as foreign policy, and politely disagreed on others, including President Trump’s tax breaks, spending cuts and border security bill.
Fetterman says he won’t support cuts to Medicaid and food aid. McCormick stresses the need for tax relief, spending cuts and border security. But he also says they agree that the federal government shouldn’t take benefits away from vulnerable people.
Fetterman and McCormick have struck up a friendship following McCormick’s victory last November over longtime Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, Fetterman’s mentor in the Senate. Fetterman has had something of a warm embrace from Republicans over his ideological split with Democrats on Israel and border policy.
On foreign policy, both men are strong backers of Israel in its war against Hamas and preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, even if it means Israel striking Iran’s nuclear facilities to destroy them.
Trump's lawyers file emergency appeals weekly to Supreme Court
Trump administration lawyers have filed emergency appeals with the nation’s highest court a little less than once a week on average since Trump began his second term.
The court is not being asked to render a final decision but rather to set the rules of the road while the case makes it way through the courts.
The justices have issued orders in 11 cases so far, and the Trump administration has won more than it has lost.
Among the administration’s victories was an order allowing it to enforce the Republican president’s ban of on transgender military service members. Among its losses was a prohibition on using an 18th century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans alleged to be gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Trump officials visit Alaska to discuss a gas pipeline and oil drilling
The Trump administration is sending three Cabinet members to Alaska this week as it pursues oil drilling in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and reinvigorating a natural gas project that’s languished for years.
The visit by Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin comes after Trump signed an executive order earlier this year aimed at boosting oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in Alaska.
The three officials are appearing at an energy conference convened by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and at events with industry representatives and Alaska Native leaders who support drilling.
Trump lashes out at Leonard Leo and Federalist Society
Trump has lashed out at Leonard Leo, the conservative legal activist who has worked to dramatically reshape the country’s courts.
Trump is blaming Leo and the group he used to head for encouraging him to appoint judges who are now blocking his agenda. Leo is the former longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, who, during Trump’s first term, helped the president transform the federal judiciary and closely advised him on his Supreme Court picks.
He is widely credited as an architect of the conservative majority responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade.
Can Trump fix the US debt?
President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Republican senators, global investors, voters and even Elon Musk that he won’t bury the federal government in debt with his multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package.
The response so far from financial markets has been skeptical as Trump seems unable to trim deficits as promised.
The tax and spending cuts that passed the House last month would add $5.1 trillion to the national debt in the coming decade if they are allowed to continue. That’s according to the Committee for a Responsible Financial Budget, a fiscal watchdog group.
Spike in steel tariffs could imperil Trump promise of lower grocery prices
President Donald Trump’s doubling of tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum could hit Americans in an unexpected place: grocery aisles.
The announcement Friday of a staggering 50% levy on those imports stoked fear that big-ticket purchases from cars to washing machines to houses could see major price increases. But those metals are so ubiquitous in packaging, they’re likely to pack a punch across consumer products from soup to nuts.
“Rising grocery prices would be part of the ripple effects,” says Usha Haley, an expert on trade and professor at Wichita State University, who added that the tariffs could raise costs across industries and further strain ties with allies “without aiding a long-term U.S. manufacturing revival.”
Trump’s return to the White House has come with an unrivaled barrage of tariffs, with levies threatened, added and, often, taken away, in such a whiplash-inducing frenzy it’s hard to keep up. He insisted the latest tariff hike was necessary to “even further secure the steel industry in the U.S.”
Trump withdrawing the nomination of Musk associate to lead NASA
Trump says he is withdrawing the nomination of tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, an associate of Trump adviser Elon Musk, to lead NASA, saying he reached the decision after a “thorough review” of Isaacman’s “prior associations.”
It was unclear what Trump meant and the White House did not respond to an emailed request for an explanation.
“After a thorough review of prior associations, I am hereby withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman to head NASA,” Trump wrote late Saturday on his social media site. “I will soon announce a new Nominee who will be Mission aligned, and put America First in Space.”
